Pixel art generator for Minecraft

Pictures that work well

Bold shapes with clear outlines and a few flat colors: game sprites, logos, emoji, cartoon faces. A photo works too if you crop it tight around the subject and keep it 64 to 128 blocks wide. Small pixel art (up to 128 pixels a side) is read one pixel per block, and Exact 1:1 keeps every pixel as it is.

Start with 8 to 16 colors. Each color is another block to farm, and pixel art rarely needs more.

Block art or map art

Block art stands in the world as a wall or lies on the ground, and you look at it directly. The Blocks palette has one color per full block: wool, concrete, terracotta, planks, stone and more.

Map art is built flat and meant to be seen on a map, held in your hand or framed on a wall. A map draws each block as one color from a fixed set, so the Map art palette uses exactly those colors. Pixelplan keeps only the flat shade: every block sits at the same height and no staircase is needed. One map covers 128 × 128 blocks.

How to build it layer by layer

1. Download the build plan PDF: a cover with the chunk or map layout, then one page per chunk or map with block numbers on every side.
2. Mark the top-left corner in your world and lay a line of marker blocks along the top edge, so every row starts in the right place.
3. Build one chunk or one map at a time, row by row from the top left, and tick each row off on the page. The strong lines every 16 blocks match chunk borders.
4. For a standing wall, build the bottom row first and work upwards from scaffolding; read the plan from its bottom row up.
5. For map art, open an empty map where you will build: maps cover fixed 128 × 128 areas of the world, so build inside its edges, all at one height, with a row of any block just north of the top row.

Gathering blocks in survival

• The list counts each color as stacks of 64, and a shulker box holds 27 stacks (1,728 blocks). Different blocks never share a slot, so the box count adds up every color's slots.
• Wool comes from sheep: dye a few sheep once and shear them again and again. Concrete powder turns into concrete when it touches water, and colored terracotta is found ready-made in badlands.
• Blocks of iron, gold, diamond, emerald, lapis and redstone, and glowstone, are costly or hard to get in survival. They start unticked under “only colors I own”, so the art uses blocks you can gather; tick them back if you have them.
• Building on a server? Agree on the spot first, and keep a chest of the colors you use most next to the build.

Colors and names

Block colors are averages of each texture, so a block can look a little different in the game: check the list before you farm. Map art colors are the exact colors a map shows. The cells are flat colors; no game texture is used.

Pixelplan is an independent tool for Minecraft players. Minecraft® is a trademark of Mojang Synergies AB.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.